Disclaimer: This article is intended as an informative piece. This is not accounting or tax advice. Please speak to a qualified tax professional about your specific circumstances before acting upon any of the information in this article.
Recap calculates your asset balances from the transactions in your account and compares them to the balances reported by the exchange. If they don't match, some transactions are missing or inaccurate, which may affect your capital gains and losses.
Here are the most common causes and how to fix them.
Exchanges can return incomplete data
Recap connects to your exchange via a read-only API, but some exchanges don't make all of your data available or return incomplete data, for example transactions with missing fees.
For some exchanges, e.g. Binance, you can fill the gaps by also importing exported CSV data from the exchange. If the exchange doesn't support this, you can add manual transactions instead.
Gaps or overlaps in uploaded files
If you import your history using CSV files, balance differences often come from the files themselves:
Date range gaps: a period of activity is missing between two files, so acquisitions or disposals in that window never reach Recap.
Overlapping date ranges: the same transactions appear in two files and are imported twice, inflating your balances.
Check that your files cover your full history with no gaps or overlaps between their date ranges.
Misclassified transfers
A transfer between your own accounts can be misread as new funds arriving (an acquisition) or funds leaving (a disposal). This affects both your balances and your tax position. You can correct these from the Activity screen; see our guide to reclassifying transactions.
Unidentified assets
When your data is imported, Recap identifies each asset from the currency codes in the transaction data. Occasionally an asset can't be identified automatically, and this can cause balance differences. You can learn more about unidentified assets and how to fix them here.
Minor balance differences
If the difference is very small, e.g. a penny in actual value, it's safe to ignore. To review and dismiss these warnings:
Open the Accounts screen and click the account to open the Account Detail screen.
Open the Balance Differences tab to compare Recap's balances against the exchange's.
If you're happy the difference is negligible, use Ignore warnings to dismiss it.
For more on what each tab shows, see The Account Detail Screen.
Need more support?
If you're still seeing large differences after the steps above, please contact us via support to chat directly with a member of the team.